Saturday, April 30, 2016

FREE COLLEGE

I matriculated at the University of Detroit in the Fall of
1947. My financial package consisted of an offer from my Father to provide free
board and room during the school year.

I found employment close to home at the Michigan Alarm
Company. I checked in on Friday evening and stayed in the office until I was
relieved on Sunday morning. My job was to alert the police and dispatch a
serviceman whenever one of the burglar alarms went off.

On Monday morning I picked up my check for $13.25 and hurried
to the Bursar’s office at the University. I gave him $10 and kept the rest for
bus fare and everything else.

1947 was a banner year for higher education in America.
Nearly eight million returning servicemen clogged the classrooms of colleges,
Universities, trade schools and high schools. They had in hand the benefits of
the GI Bill, more properly known as the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944.

It was a privilege for a fuzzy cheeked eighteen year old to
sit beside 23 and 27 year old veterans of World War II. They had not yet been
christened “The Greatest Generation,” but they were special young men who had experienced
much, learned a lot, and matured incredibly. They studied hard, played hard and
lived the life of college men to the hilt. Over the next thirty years, they
triggered the most historic and enviable national prosperity ever known on
Planet Earth.

In the Army, the Navy and the Marines they had learned to
rise and shine, to make their beds, to follow orders, to be a team, to suffer
in silence, to overcome failure, to tolerate pain, and to give one hundred
percent of their heart and soul and their physical, mental and emotional selves
to finish the job; to win the war.

They were good students.And they set a high bar of competition for kids like me.

My son, Tom Jr., since retiring as a District Judge in
Ingham County, has taken on the task of teaching Criminal Justice at Michigan
State University and Lansing Community College.

He tells me that he always has three or four veterans in his
classes. They are, he assures me, the very best students. They are always in
class, always on time, always prepared. They complete their assignments. On
time. On target.

I got to thinking about all of this the other evening while
watching the television. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who aspires to be the
President of the United States, was addressing a group of Indiana voters,
anda young man stood and was recognized
to ask a question of the candidate.

He is, he said, a high school senior, and while he had not
yet made up his mind about the Primary Election, he was drawn to Bernie
Sanders, whose promise to provide free college education certainly had a lot of
appeal to someone in his position.

Cruz, the true and consistent conservative, proceeded to
assure the young man that, if elected President, he would trigger a cornucopia
of good paying jobs enabling college graduates to repay their monstrous
student loans in short order.

Then a few days later, Donald Trump was addressing a crowd
on Greta Van Susteren’s show and he was asked the same question by another high
school senior.

He gave the lad the same unconvincing answer Ted Cruz
offered. Somebody should tell the Republicans that Adam Smith’s free enterprise
scenario doesn’t wash with Generation Z – the Centennials. That’s why they are
‘feeling the Bern.‘

The true Republican answer to the young folks ought to be very
simple: “Join the Army.” The GI Bill was renewed after 9/11. Republicans should
make sure it is well funded and better known. The free college education
promised by Socialist Sanders would condemn the next generation to an extended
adolescence. But the GI Bill will do for them what it did for their
grandfathers; reward them for their service to the nation and recognize their
maturity as veterans.

They should, in the words of John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what
their country can do for them, but ask what they can do for their country.”

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